No Republican presidential has carried Michigan and won the state’s 16 electoral votes since then-Vice President George H.W. Bush’s 1988 victory over Democrat Michael Dukakis.

Trump’s campaign has targeted Michigan as a Democratic-leaning state they can get in their column in the November general election.

“We cannot sit by and let this chance go by,” Hagerstrom said...

“We’re not only battling crooked Hillary, but we’re battling a lot of what the media is reporting and their narrative,” said Hagerstrom, adopting Trump’s “crooked Hillary” nickname for Clinton. “But that’s not the narrative of the American people, that’s not the narrative of our country, what we need to make happen with our country.”

Meshawn Maddock, a conservative activist from Milford and Trump national convention delegate, helped organize the event as part of a statewide “listening tour” she’s conducting to get input on the Republican Party’s policy platform."

"Michigan keeps popping up in national discussions as a state of potential for Mr. Trump, alongside Pennsylvania and Ohio, the idea being that Mr. Trump’s anti-trade, anti-offshoring views will pay dividends in the Rust Belt. Just last week, CNN was drawing up a scenario to get Mr. Trump to 270 electoral votes, and it involved Mr. Trump winning Michigan, Ohio, Pennsylvania and Virginia.

On Monday, Mr. Trump’s lead Michigan strategist, Scott Hagerstrom, was quoted by both Detroit newspapers at a conservative event as saying Michigan is winnable for Mr. Trump.

So how could Mr. Trump theoretically get there?

For starters, to get Mr. Trump a win in Michigan, he has to do no worse than the best performance by a Republican presidential candidate in Michigan during the Democratic streak, the 2004 race that President George W. Bush lost to John Kerry by 3.5 percentage points (165,437 votes).

That’s a daunting gap. Mr. Bush ran well in many areas, but got buried in Wayne County, which Mr. Kerry won by 342,297 votes. But let’s assume Mr. Trump can at least get that close and not get blown out like Mitt Romney (2012), John McCain (2008) or Bob Dole (1996).

How does he close that gap?

It would start with a lower turnout in Wayne County thanks to population loss and no longer having Mr. Obama, the first African-American nominee of a major party for president, on the ballot.

Could those factors trim 20 percent from the 305,258 votes Mr. Kerry received from Detroit in 2004? Mr. Obama pulled 281,743 some votes in 2012, a decline of 11 percent since Mr. Kerry’s result in 2004, so it seems possible. That would take away 61,000 votes.

Mr. Bush carried Macomb County by a small margin in 2004. Anecdotal reports have Mr. Trump doing well there and he scored huge in Macomb in the Republican primary. Just for arguments’ sake, what if Mr. Trump’s big, brash style appeals to Macomb voters and he wins the county 56 percent to 42 percent? Assuming the usual recent 400,000 votes out of the county in a presidential election, that would produce a 50,000-vote boost over Mr. Bush’s margin in 2004 there.

Now Mr. Trump has perhaps closed the gap by 111,000 votes.

Next, Mr. Trump would have to make good on his supporters’ hopes he can boost the vote with some white voters who otherwise would not vote. Could that be good for say, a half-percentage point boost statewide? That would be about 20,000 more votes, bringing the total gap closure to 131,000.

Finally, Mr. Trump would need disaffected supporters of Bernie Sanders to refuse to support Ms. Clinton. He’s trying to welcome them into his camp. That’s, uh, not going to work. But it’s possible the Green Party nominee, Jill Stein, could do much better than the 21,897 votes she received in 2012.

Could Ms. Stein get something on the order of the 84,165 votes that Ralph Nader got in Michigan in 2000 (with those votes coming from directly from people who would have voted Democratic but refused to back Ms. Clinton)?

That would get Mr. Trump to victory in Michigan."_____________________________________________________________________Brandon Hall is a lifelong political nerd from Grand Haven, and is the Managing Editor of West Michigan Politics.

Unity is the KEY & Allegan County is going to show Mi. how to do it--IF every County Chair will do it ! The Tea Party & Repubs have the same values and they are in our Mi. Platform! I have a 8 by 11 one side comparison sheet that's even legal to pass out in Churches! It compares the Dem Platform & Repub on 6 most important things: GOD -SAME SEX MARRIAGE- OBAMACARE-ABORTION-HHS MANDATE/RELIGIOUS LIBERTY-PLANNED PARENTHD--I will mail it to anyone who gives you their address OR they can make their pwn with their own County's Choices!! It can go in newspapers or Blogs or copies can be distributed !! IT WILL GET OUT THE VOTE!!!! Especially those who say ;"There' no differance in the Parties so I'm not going to vote !!

The FBI is almost done with their investigation of Hillary (and soon to be announced shortly thereafter indictment). They only have one more person to interview, and that is HRC herself.

Barry is in a bit of a bind here.

After their brokered "agreement" to allow his ascendancy into the White House, in exchange for his support of the Hildebeast after his terms are done, the Obama's & Clinton's don't exactly like each other very much.

He can honor his agreement and run interference in the investigation from sandbagging the release date of the findings into well into 2017, to pulling an extremely stupid Jerry Ford-esque issuing of a blanket pardon which will polarize Conservatives and infuriate the independents along with potentially dragging on the rest of the down ballot choices in November.

Or, he can infuriate the kingmakers withing the DNC by reneging on his deal and indulging his already over-inflated ego by watching her campaign crash and burn literally days from the Philadelphia Convention with the democratic party nomination literally oh-so-close from her fingertips.

But, these are the same ones who pay/paid for things like Barry's campaign (and Presidential Library and the other finer things in life to which Barry has become accustomed).